Longtime Detroit development chief George Jackson announced his resignation Thursday as president of the Detroit Economic Growth Corp. against the backdrop of Mayor Mike Duggan’s move to strengthen his control over the city’s sprawling development agencies.

As the city’s point man on redevelopment deals as varied as the Westin Book Cadillac and the new Ilitch family’s arena for the Red Wings, Jackson has won praise for working development magic in a distressed town, even as he stirred controversies for decisions to tear down Tiger Stadium and to give the Ilitches what some criticized as overly generous terms.

So successful has Jackson’s DEGC been at doing deals in recent years that emergency manager Kevyn Orr announced plans last year to remove planning and development efforts from the mayor’s direct control and transfer them to the DEGC. But the newly elected Duggan persuaded Orr to reverse that move, and Duggan recently named his longtime friend, attorney Tom Lewand, as his director for jobs and the economy over all such functions.

Jackson said Thursday he plans to head his own private economic development consulting firm to be based in Detroit. “I have a passion for this city, and it doesn’t go away when I leave the growth corporation as its president.”

The agency is a nonprofit entity that provides staffing and negotiating muscle for quasi-public agencies, including the Downtown Development Authority and the Brownfield Redevelopment Authority. After a long career with DTE Energy, Jackson was named to the presidency of DEGC in February 2002 by then-Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick.

In remarks to the Free Press on Thursday, Duggan said there was no friction leading to Jackson’s resignation, which takes effect March 31.

“I think George did a great job, and I would expect that we’d have a similar kind of arrangement with the new director,” Duggan told the Free Press.

At the time of Lewand’s appointment, Duggan said, “I do not believe we’ve had the kind of coordination between city government and the DEGC in recent years that there has been at different times.”

On Thursday, Duggan said that Lewand would help facilitate permits and other needs on deals that the DEGC staffers were negotiating. And the mayor downplayed the idea that a grand realignment of the city’s planning and development functions was in the works. “Things that are at DEGC should stay at DEGC, and we support that. They’re doing a great job,” Duggan said.

Nonetheless, supporters of Jackson were dismayed Thursday by news of his leaving.

John Ferchill, the Cleveland-based developer who negotiated a deal with Jackson to renovate the long-dormant Book-Cadillac Hotel into the upscale new Westin, decried Jackson’s resignation Thursday. “I think it’s a great, great loss to the city of Detroit,” Ferchill said. “George Jackson’s the best economic development guy I ever dealt with, ever.”

And Ferchill said he was “flabbergasted to learn that (Duggan) is planning to realign, at best, or dismantle, at worst, Detroit Economic Growth Corporation.”

Marcell Todd Jr., director of planning for the City Council’s advisory City Planning Commission, predicted that Duggan would succeed in centralizing control of planning efforts, although how remains to be seen.

“I don’t yet have a sense of what the new big picture is going to look like,” he said Thursday. “I think we’re heading toward a more centralization of planning and development functions within the city and the primary lead on planning and development issues being seated in the city and the DEGC more subservient to the city itself.”

With a list of accomplishments as long as his controversies, Jackson stood at the center of virtually all major development deals in Detroit for 12 years, from the removal of cement silos from the east riverfront that allowed the creation of the RiverWalk to the recently announced deal with the Ilitch family to build a new arena for the Red Wings amid a wider mixed-use entertainment district.

If the biggest deals made the headlines, Jackson’s DEGC also led quieter campaigns to help downtown property owners clean up and improve building facades, to improve the energy efficiency of their properties, to promote smaller retail entities, and to spruce up downtown prior to Super Bowl XL in 2006.

The Super Bowl cleanup work included wider sidewalks, new signage and streetlighting, and other improvements. Jackson also helped negotiate deals to bring in the Whole Foods store in Midtown and the new Meijer store near 8 Mile and Woodward.

If often praised, Jackson has been the target of criticism for years by some neighborhood groups like the Old Tiger Stadium Conservancy for tearing down structures, including Tiger Stadium, the historic but vacant Statler Hotel on Grand Circus Park and the eyesore Lafayette Building near Campus Martius, all demolished during Jackson’s tenure. Some wags on the Internet claimed that DEGC stood for “Destroy Everything, George Cries.”

Asked about his critics Thursday, Jackson replied in typically blunt fashion, “I’m more than willing to sit down with rational people, not the lunatic fringe.”

Once he leaves DEGC, Jackson will still have a hand in various Detroit efforts. Among others, he will continue for now as chair of the nonprofit board overseeing the Eastern Market and as chair of the steering committee for the Detroit Future City effort to map new directions for the city.